Boel trained under his father and later, according to Erasmus Quellinus, Jan Fyt. After travelling to Rome and Genoa in the early 1640s he returned to his native Antwerp, and was enrolled in the Guild of Saint Luke in 1650. In 1668 he was in Paris where he worked under Le Brun for the Gobelins factory. A number of studies of animals, usually in coloured chalks, were owned by Le Brun and are now in the Louvre, E. Starcky, Inventaire Général des Dessins des Ecoles du Nord, Supplément, 1988, nos. 123-67, illustrated